A modern antiquity

He’s a lover of old cars, old vinyl records, old furniture, an old briefcase and old literature, but he’s certainly not conventional. Jonathan Walker, 39, has unusual teaching methods that open up discussion and critical thought on some antiquated subjects.

Walker, an assistant professor of English at Portland State, teaches an array of subjects including Shakespearean tragedy, early English drama, renaissance poetry, queer theory and gender and sexuality issues in literature in the English Renaissance period. He has held his teaching position at PSU for four and a half years.

He likes his subjects: “The complexity of it, the performance aspect, publication issues and the multi-dimensional aspect. This period in history touches on many cultural issues about race, class, women, works that exploded at the end of the 16th century.” 

“I am useless on anything else,” he said, referring to his present position in the English Department.

In class he doesn’t often lecture. Instead, he holds conversations with his students, influenced by the style in which teachers he admired taught.

“I don’t want it to feel like an educational experience. I like to teach without you even knowing you are being taught. Often students will not know how much knowledge they have achieved until the class is over. I keep discussions centered on the text, but nothing is off limits. We talk about sex, torture, executions, queer theory in my classes.”

He said he likes the Portland State student population because the average undergraduate age is 26.

“We have limited ethnic diversity but are rich in the variety of life experiences these students have,” Walker said.

Sustaining conversation depends on the day; sometimes he feels students are bored by the material, or fatigued. In that case, he will draw them out or ask them what they would like to discuss instead.

“Students have a great deal of responsibility in raising the quality of our discussions. Sometimes English majors are not used to that. They are used to being fed information. I’m interested in ideas about the material,” Walker said, “That’s where the work takes place.” 

Shakespeare, he explained, intimidates some students because they feel they have to know the meaning of the play but that “the meaning means what we in the class make of it. Plays have multiple meanings,” he said. He strives to find hidden meanings through conversations.

“It’s all about critical thinking and analysis. Othello, for instance, is about an African-American man who is both inside and outside of main society. He is a rough man. The play both celebrates him and denigrates him. It’s easy to say the play is racist or not racist. It is both. Many of these issues apply to our lives today. We do rhetorical analysis underlying the argument,” he said.

Queer theory, another class he teaches, ranges from femininity to transgender issues.

“Here we’re exploring the need to be free in the classroom and to be careful about assumptions,” he said.

He commented on his concerns about the future, not only the condition of the environment, but also how technology will change teaching and threatens “actual human contact” in the classroom.

Walker is also unhappy about the university’s tendency to hire adjunct labor to avoid benefits such as health care and tenure.

He said research suggests that student contact with professors committed to the university finish programs and move quickly through their education.

As a kid, he had no idea he would end up in this profession. He began to realize his dream when became an undergraduate at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Prior to becoming a teacher he was an auto mechanic, a job he disliked enough that it served to motivate him to go back to school.

During his youth he didn’t like reading, wasn’t “that good” in high school and had no plans to go to college. Nonetheless, he graduated magna cum laude in Humanities from Rollins College, where he earned his bachelor of the arts degree.

Despite his modesty, his curriculum vitae reveal his many achievements.

He has been a curatorial assistant, a managing editor and participant at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell, he has also co-edited books, and traveled around England conducting research and presenting to fellow scholars.

He co-edited a book that has just been published by Ashgate Publications in England, which took six years to complete, entitled, Early Modern Academic Drama.

He is currently working on a collection of essays he and others have written about medieval saints, Ovid and ancient literary criticism.